


Awakening

by LilydaleXF



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, MSR, Season/Series 11, oddness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-05 15:54:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21211160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilydaleXF/pseuds/LilydaleXF
Summary: Mulder and Scully find themselves in a place where they don't understand anything but each other.





	Awakening

**Author's Note:**

> Assume spoilers through season 11, though there are no specific spoilers except one little mention of "Quagmire." Set sometime after Mulder and Scully have the unremarkable house in Virginia that is first seen in "I Want to Believe." Also, there are spoilers for the movie "The Empire Strikes Back" even though this story has nothing to do with the Star Wars universe.
> 
> Thanks to Anjou for the encouragement and read-through.

The sky glows red, and the air smells like freesia. _Poison is sweet_, Scully thinks, as she tips her head back and takes a deep breath.

Mulder lies straight on the grass next to her. His skin looks pale and rubbery. His breathing is shallow. Whatever contaminate They put in the air affected him faster than it has her. She takes another measured breath and waits.

** ** ** ** **

When Scully wakes and opens her eyes her head feels fuzzy. Hard fuzz, like sandpaper has been rubbed inside her head. She quickly clamps her eyes shut and holds them tight to will away the burn in her head, so tightly that she starts seeing spots. At least she can see the spots. Having something tangible to examine has always been her preference.

She's cognizant enough to know she’s in a bed, but her mind can’t quite process the locale beyond that right now. She snakes her hand blindly along the cool, smooth sheets in search of Mulder. It’s instinct, for she has no reason to believe that he’s wherever here is, except for how he has been next to her for years of awakenings. A sudden warm pang in the deepest red corner of her heart is added to the pulsing in her head.

_He’s not here_, she frets. She cracks open one eye to confirm what she already knows. The other side of the bed is indeed empty. _But he was here_. There’s a dent in the pillow next to hers.

She rolls over, slowly and clumsily like she’s made of Jell-O. She presses her face into his pillow, clutches the sheet up to her mouth. Everything smells like him. She’s crying a little, she realizes, as she’s overpowered back into sleep.

** ** ** ** **

The white lights are so bright she can't keep her eyes open. _It's better that way, I don't like to see_, Scully thinks to herself. Metal so cold under her back has like last time made her shoulders curl upward. _Where am--_

Her thoughts end as the room goes dark.

** ** ** ** **

Mulder's hand is on her bare hip with his fingers drawing little patterns that feel like infinity symbols. She keeps looking into his drooped, bleary eyes and mumbles, "Infinity." She's as groggy as he looks so it comes out more like "Infinn. Tee."

She hopes he knows that she means how she feels, that she means them and not their situation. He does, he does, since he nods sloppily in assent and says, "F'evah," as they lie facing each other on the bed.

She falls back asleep before his fingertips stop drawing their forever.

** ** ** ** **

She's on the flat table again and feels a pressure on her abdomen, but it's not an unpleasant pressure. It's calming, like when Queequeg would nap on her. She never missed having a dog enough to get another one, but Queequeg did bring her a certain calm that was lost along with him.

A light's bright in her eyes. She can't see. _Metal_, she thinks. _Metal reflects, metal is heavy on my stomach and cool on my back_.

Beeping noises are coming from somewhere to her left. A man is talking softly in baritone over there too. Or is it liquid gurgling in a guttural way?

Her eyes burst open, and it dawns on her why she couldn't before see. It's even brighter now, and metal is above her, spinning, spinning, loud, loud.

"Muld--" she says before the light is not a bother anymore to someone who's unconscious.

** ** ** ** **

"Hey,” he says as she opens her eyes. He’s on his side with his head titled up but still over his pillow. He's obviously been staring at her.

She stares at Mulder agape. “Good morning,” he adds.

There are no open windows to shine in a rising sun. Instead, lamps flank either side of the bed and give the room a pleasing yellow glow. They're hotel standard: sleek and modern. Sometimes they're on, sometimes they're off, but it's not due to anything Mulder or Scully does. He must have seen the lights move from off to on, hence the morning. They've come to consensus that "lights on" is daytime, which brings her a sense of normalcy even as it chafes for that to likely be exactly why they've been given lamps in the first place.

Scully's small hand flexes against his large, warm thigh, where it was already planted. His eyes blink very slowly as his lips curl just a tad into what she still recognizes as pleasure, as his form of peace. Everything is so strange, but there's still this.

Their eyes are locked as he murmurs, "We have got to get one of these comforters for home, Scully.”

“What? No!”

He grumbles in discontent. “But it’s so soft,” he says as he rubs his hand all over it and across her body as a result.

Despite the incontrovertible facts that the comforter feels very good and that his hands on it above her make it feel even better, she asks, “You want a reminder of this place back home?”

He sighs. There’s a considerable bout of silence before he whispers, “Do you think we’re going to get back home?”

There’s a sudden hissing noise, and the room smells afresh of flowers. Mulder and Scully stop talking.

** ** ** ** **

There's a clutter of empty plates and bowls on the square tables on either side of the bed. The room still smells of cinnamon. She's vaguely aware that she should be upset, eating another meal with hot baked apples in a strange but decadent bed, but everything is so still and tranquil that she lazily stretches and feels as serene and alert as she ever does here, always after a meal.

Scully looks around from her reclined position on the bed and sees the same room she sees every day measured by lights on, lights off. In addition to the bed and small side tables, there's a dresser, a round table with three chairs, and one puffy loveseat. _This a better hotel than I'm used to_, it occurs to her, _except for the part where there are no windows_.

Apples are not enough to quell the discomfort that registering fact rises in her belly, though it stems more from brief confusion than from any sort of panic.

She can see a bathroom off to the right of the bed though she can't remember ever being inside of it.

"Mulder, have you ever been to the bathroom?"

He turns his head on the pillow to look at her. "Ever?" he asks in return.

"Ever here," she answers kindly and blandly in lieu of an exasperated sigh.

His brow crinkles and his eyes crunch in a squint. It makes his face look small, which makes his nose look bigger, which reminds her that she adores this goofy man, which causes her to reach over and draw a slow line down his nose because he is here and he is thinking for her and, oh, look at how her fingertip fits snug on his lips where they dip in the middle right below his nose.

He moves her away with his hand in a sideways motion that paints her finger with a kiss before he says, "No, I don't think so."

"Me either."

"But I think I have left the room."

"Me too. There was a metal table." Her mouth opens to say more, but there is no more memory there.

"I remember clay," he says as if it's a surprise to him. His memory is obviously affected too.

"Clay? Like art class? Or like the desert?"

"Neither, really," he says after a pause. "More like I was sinking into a soft clay, like a mold."

"Like Han Solo in carbonite?"

"Scully, I cannot tell you how much I love that that's the first thing out of your mouth."

"I know."

"That's what Han Solo said to Leia right before he got frozen in carbonite."

"I know that too."

They smile. His hand finds hers under the covers and tangles their fingers tightly as he wonders, "Metal?"

She squeezes his hand and replies, "Clay?"

"I think I'd have a better understanding of this situation if carbonite was involved."

"Me too," she says as the lights click off.

** ** ** ** **

“Scully! Scully!” she hears Mulder call. But it sounds distant and distorted, like it's traveling through water. She can’t tell if it’s real or a dream. “Mulder, it’s me, I’m here,” she mumbles softly out of her dry, pouting mouth that she doesn’t have enough energy to close after speaking those few words. It hangs unglamorously open as she continues lying on the bed, eyes fluttering. The lights click on.

** ** ** ** **

He's on his stomach next to her on the bed, and she's massaging his back. Or trying to, as she's also on her stomach and her hand is on his back and sometimes rubbing softly along his spine. He still feels so sure and strong.

"The clay, did it ever hurt?" she asks.

"No," he says right away, but she can tell he's still thinking. "And I don't think there's always clay. Sometimes I was maybe taking a bath? Like being warmed?"

Even though his answer has questioning doubt in it, it's more than she remembers. "I only remember metal. And Queequeg."

Mulder huffs a laugh. "Your dog? He's here?"

"No, just on my lap."

"Scully, you know I think you're the smartest person I know, but you sound nuts."

She does, she knows she does. It's another reason she does not favor being here.

"Sometimes," she says carefully while trying to remember, "it's like he's sleeping on my stomach while I'm laying down. Heavy, warm."

"Mmmmm, me too."

She brushes her hand in annoyance along his back, "Now you're the one with a dog on his lap?"

"No, I sometimes feel like that in the clay. In the bath. Whatever. I don't know."

"I don't know either, Mulder."

A short time later she feels his breathing steady as he falls asleep, which carries her along with him.

** ** ** ** **

Her back is warm even though it's on something hard. _Not metal_, she thinks as she opens her eyes. Mulder is on the ground next to her, his eyes fluttering open against the sunset red sky along with hers.

Their house sits as a quiet beacon a short walk away. _I want to be in there_, is all she thinks as she stands up in tandem with Mulder. There's a look of awe on his face that she doesn't doubt mirrors her own.

She starts to take a step toward the house, but Mulder stops her with a grab of her hand. "Look," he whispers, his chin popping up to point to the second story. "The window of the spare bedroom, it's so pink."

He's right. The setting sun makes their house glow pink from their spot in the backyard, but it shines brightest on the glass of that window. His arms snake around her waist. She places her hands on his over her middle and whispers, "Our nursery."

The window glows pink, and they know their future as they walk toward it.

**Author's Note:**

> Is it a happy ending or not? Were Mulder and Scully taken for good reasons or for bad reasons? That's all up to you! I initially imagined this story to explain how Scully could become pregnant in "My Struggle IV" because that makes no sense, but in the end it does not really explain that or whether Mulder and Scully were taken to force a baby upon Scully or to make it possible for them to make their own baby in due time. Hopefully it opens the door either way in interesting, undefined X-Files fashion.


End file.
